Did you know…? We are living in exponential times.

The video doesn’t really provide any answers, but it does provide a lot of evidence that the world is changing very rapidly. Most of the changes are taking place in the realm of telecommunications, but this realm, of course, affects politics, economics, culture, language, and the basic tenets of human societies.

I found a few of its slides particularly interesting. The country with the greatest broadband penetration is… Bermuda. The United States? …#19. And Japan? …#22.

During the roughly five minutes of the presentation, 67 babies were born in the US, 274 born in China, and 395 in India. Meanwhile, nearly 7000,000 songs were downloaded illegally.

Between 2006 and 2008, the number of searches on Google per month increased from 2.7 billion to 31 billion. With just over a billion Internet-capable devices being used in 2008, this means that each device is used to ask an open question every day! In 2011, the number of inquiries per device is likely to be even greater. Instead of asking someone for information or advice, we are more likely now to seek for answers using technology and to source wisdom in crowds.

As I wrote first, this doesn’t provide any meaningful answers about society or our future. But it does mean, to me, that we must think – as educators – about how to integrate the devices and networks that people are using, as fundamental parts of the school/learning/growing up/development process, or we will be discarded.